Responsive Website Design

top reasons your website should be responsive

Responsive Website Design

Jamie

Brewerj Web Design

The Concept of Responsive Website Design

Responsive Website Design is an approach to web design that suggests that design and development should responsive to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation.

Devices & Screen Resolutions

Devices like desktops, tablets or mobile devices all bring varying amounts of pixels ratios and overall screen real estate. Responsive web design aims to dynamically resize and display your content in the most user friendly way. This is important for a couple of reasons. The most important reason (IMO) is screen real estate.

Smaller devices (especially mobile phones) display real estate is more valuable because there are less pixels to display your content. Since this is the case you would want to maximize this real estate to make sure your getting the most out of every pixel available to the user.

Every responsive website design wants a user to stay on their website as long as possible. It gives the website owner a better chance of converting the visitor to a customer. Having your content display in the most organized and accessible manners almost guarantees a user will stick around longer when using a smaller device.

Responsive WordPress Design

Responsive website design matters primarily because it’s what users expect, and if your visitors aren’t happy or able to quickly find what they are looking for they are likely to move on pretty quickly. With the amount of people access content through mobile devices like cell phones it’s becoming increasingly important to make sure you are catering to your visitors by delivering your content in an organized and easily accessible way.

1. Easy to Manage

Having a separate desktop and mobile site requires having separate SEO campaigns. Managing one site and one SEO campaign is far easier than managing two sites and two SEO campaigns. This is a key advantage a responsive website has over a separate mobile site.

2. Enhanced User Experience

While, content is king and the ability to discover your content are foremost success metrics, it is the user experience that enables visitors to consume your content through the device of their choice and preference, anytime. Thus, responsive web design is about providing the optimal user experience irrespective of whether they use a desktop computer, a smartphone, a tablet or a smart-TV.

Responsive web design accommodates the busy professional during the day and the wide-awake college student needing access to your site anytime. No scrolling or resizing is needed for any visitor to access your website from their favorite device.

3. Cost Effective

The advantages of having a single site that conforms to the need of all devices are significant when compared to having two separate websites. One website costs less than two, and the savings can be substantial.

Websites designed purely for mobile device traffic do not offer the advanced navigational techniques found in traditional websites, and they also require the user to maintain two separate web addresses for your site. This is inconvenient for most people and can cause them to check out your competition’s website. Responsive web design enhances SEO efforts by having all your visitors directed to a single site no matter what they prefer to use as a device.

4. Google Recommends It

With 67 percent search market share, when Google speaks, search marketers listen. Google states that responsive web design is its recommended mobile configuration, and even goes so far as to refer to Responsive Website Design as the industry best practice.This is because responsive design sites have one URL and the same HTML, regardless of device, which makes it easier and more efficient for Google to crawl, index, and organize content.

Contrast this with a separate mobile site which has a different URL and different HTML than its desktop counterpart, requiring Google to crawl and index multiple versions of the same site. Additionally, Google prefers responsive web design because content that lives on one website and one URL is much easier for users to share, interact with, and link to than content that lives on a separate mobile site.

Take for example a mobile user who shares content from a mobile site with a friend on Facebook who then accesses that content using a desktop, which results in that user viewing a stripped down mobile site on their desktop. This creates a less than optimal user-experience, and because of the large emphasis Google is now placing on user-experience as a ranking factor, this is essential to take into account with regards to SEO.

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10 Mobile Statistics That Will Amaze You

So you’re still not convinced that responsive website design is worth the investment?

More people in the world own smartphones than toothbrushes.

This mind blowing to me. I’m assuming there are people in third world countries walking around with an iPhone and no toothbrush!

4 out of 5 consumers shop on smartphones.

That’s 80% of shoppers! And it’s no surprise that younger generations are leading the charge. On social media platform Wanelo, 85 – 90% of shoppers are on smartphones.

70% of mobile searches lead to an action within the hour.

That sounds like a conversion rate I can get on board with.

40% of people will choose a different search result if the first is not mobile friendly.

Let’s say you own a pizza shop, and there’s another pizza shop a few blocks away. A woman is visiting town for the weekend and wants pizza. She Googles “pizza” on her phone. Your competitor’s website is mobile-friendly and yours isn’t. That potential customer never even got the chance to taste your pizza. She decided based on the mobile experience. (Panic ensues.)

45% of users ages 18-29 use their smartphones for searches every day.

That’s a lot of searches. That means SEO only goes so far. You have to make sure your site looks awesome when all those users find it on a smartphone.

1 in 3 kids in the UK owns their own tablet.

Kids in the UK are now less likely than ever to have a TV in their room. Instead, they’re all getting tablets. If you want to appeal to customers for generations to come, you’ll want to cater to a crowd that learned to use a touch screen before they learned basic math.

Facebook’s Messaging App has over 1 billion users.

Apparently users are willing (very willing) to deal with signing away their privacy. That’s nearly ⅙ of the world talking to each other on a mobile Facebook app.

Tablets will outsell PCs in 2014, and tablets in 2015.

Ah, phablets! The cross between the phone and the tablet. Technically defined as any phone with a screen size between 5 and 7 inches or so. The more efficient and usable phones and phablets get, the less use your average Jane has for a huge, hulking desktop, or even a 15” MacBook.

So if you are ready to get on board with the responsive web train now is the time. Get in touch today! Seats are limited.

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Got Questions?

Yes, your website and your domain name belong to you after deployment, and all fees have been settled. I do offer website hosting for a monthly fee providing additional security and updates, but this is an option available upon completion of the development phase.

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The Concept of Responsive Website Design Responsive Website Design is an approach to web design that suggests that design and development should responsive to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. Responsive web design sites are fluid, meaning the content moves freely across all screens… Devices & Screen Resolutions Devices … read more